I am pleased to welcome craig to the store this evening as his first visit at politics prose also though wanted his book is called kissingers shadow but he would be likely known for his earlier book which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book award. Also the empire and of necessity a professor of history at New York University and has written for a variety of publications including the New York Times and Los Angeles Times and a recipient of fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation it draws on recently available government sources as well as biographies and work from a controversial subject as a student at harvard to look at kissingers political philosophy back to the cambodian invasion arguing for their current militarization of American Foreign policy. Evan thomas praised the book for the literary flair and a sharp eye for the absurdities of politics. We are happy to have him here with us this evening. [applause] what a very nice turn now. Thanks with a lovely introduction. Id think some friends were supposed to be here i dont know if larry is here. He is the director and was going to credit him for teaching me quite a bit on how to write. He is not here. When i book friends and colleagues of the legacy of kissingers policy many made mention of the of book that is quite wellknown and did very well Christopher Hichens did well and i saw my purpose to be a little antipedicle to hichens polemic which is a good example of what a great historian called for dismissed as the devils the area of four. The tendency to place the blame for militarism on a single cause and to really understand the sources of conflict to look at the big picture to consider the waves that war is work to emerge bader of the economic situation. And hichens making the case that kissinger should be tried and convicted for war crimes did not look at the big picture but focused obsessively on the morality of one man of kissinger but aside from assembling a the dockage in the trial i dont think it is useful but actually counterproductive righteous indignation does not provide room for understanding hed gets deep into his dark part but the statesmen was implicated in atrocities with a list of countries cambodia, a bank with dash, Latin America america, Southern Africa, here in washington d. C. When operation condor blew up to assassinate a former minister against the kurds in and on and on. Hichens leaves readers waiting to come out of this journey into kissingers dark heart to tell us what it means that kissinger is a criminal but agents never does. Most students of kissinger find it hard to say anything that isnt about him he eclipses his own context and leaves many biographers and critics to focus exclusively on the quirks of his personality or moral failings. The other great book of course, is the price of power and that it did capture the secretive world of the nationalsecurity apparatus functioning during the vietnam war and that study of his paranoia is an innocent preludin to the surveillance thank counterterrorism state that we live under he gave us a defining portraits that any biographer follows will have to top this that he has paranoia to offenses carrier to curse his fate will let the b52s fly to share in his motives but he is shakespearean because it is played out of the world stage with epic consequences but hersh rating could not know of the longterm effects not only of specific policies but how kissingers extension was some previewed zero later generation who in the 90s took us into Central America deeper after 9 11 and afghanistan and. Saw his shadow is long. He is 92 years old and his life course is through the decades from the jungles of vietnam and cambodia to the persian gulf shedding light on the road to where we now find ourselves. I think some of the early reviews of the book were strong but i did not hold kissinger responsible for the evolution as a National Security state into what it has become. Many people were involved in that battle thank you extract kissinger you have for virtuous republic but his career eliminates that National Security state like no one else and he was a key player during a transformative moment of the imperial presidency when the vietnam war and watergate began to undermine the traditional foundations on which cold war policy stood since the beginning of the 40s to plan a bipartisan consensus of support. That unraveling end then ran through 66 to the Civilrights Movement and the beginnings of the vietnam war but it took the crisis to a new level that is illegal invasion that he was the architect kicks off a series of events that led directly to watergate tonight to watergate to is domestic scandal but really Foreign Policy to keep the bombing secret and kissinger more than any other staffer who got nixon while the about the pentagon papers. If you have no information as far as i know not the space they presided over but there was of the your that the leaks that led to the pentagon papers could leak out after 1969. Kissinger began one Overall Office reading saying he is a despicable bastard. To describe passionate in his denunciation of Daniel Goldberg that is the key to his performance to stir up his various resentments as if he is of liberal she was smart and promiscuous and privileged. [laughter] now he has married of very rich girl. [laughter] and nixon was fascinated earlier. He got henry all cranked up the day were both in a frenzy. Kissinger told nixon as it shows you are a weakling mr. President. So that led to more crimes that led to the early plotting to Close Friends and associates were the highest offices were sparing antiwar dissidents to plan bombings on the Brookings Institute to give orders to run the of paramilitary black band operations that led to watergate but even as they were beginning to break up the old National Security state of the kissinger has survived watergate to and continued under the success of general ford was helping with the reconstruction of the National Security state in a new form as a restored imperial presidency to move forward into post the vietnam world. There are many different elements of this restored and nationalsecurity stage. I will touch on a few of them which is the increased dependency on secrecy and covert action. Kissingers the of the book supports of insurgencies and thirdparty mercenaries in angola provided a template for a the reagan expansion of similar covert operations that led to irancontra. The second element that is central to the restoration of the imperial state is the increased use of a tourism to leverage domestically as that consensus of ravels war or the threat of it or violence and brutality was used to leverage that polarization and division for a domestic event. This isnt new. They would use that for domestic gain but in the post consensus of raveling they said you cannot find one Foreign Policy that they presided over the also didnt take place for domestic advantage in was that emissary to placate the rising right to in the way that Everybody Knows about the southern strategy with the attempt to win over the racist democrats for the election to ensure the of landslide right wing for thirdparty but that strategy had a Foreign Policy of the destruction and brutality visited on cambodia dash blouse was a way to placate the right and also in Southern Africa as the tar baby option with his policy to work with white supremacist against liberalization movements was directly aimed at keeping Southern States said senators happy. The u. N. Should respect the internal policies of the south african states would resonate among the senators who said the federal courts should stay out of the affairs of mississippi and south carolina. In one meeting he went to placate reagan as governor of california we would not have had cambodia or laos to prove that neck nixon was a hawk but that element to the average brutal militarism as of way to win over the right really gets started under nixon and kissinger goes along with it and is the key agent. In the third element is the deployment of displays of violence of shot the and all not to enemies this element happens after kissinger leaves office as he is added as a consultant jude support pretty much every military incursion into the middle east living under what were under today but with the chief contribution to the post leonora resurgence of the of military but his main legacy was metaphysical. Conventional wisdom opposes him to dick cheney or Paul Wolfowitz or Donald Rumsfeld and drove the u. S. Into a afghanistan and iraq his realism is said to be of good different philosophical tradition than the have the arrogance that United States military was so powerful it could make reality and a note to remember that quotation. And it is true that many of the most prominent neo carts instead use kissinger to say he was the loser because of vietnam and he was the loser bf vietnam and a sinner because supposedly he did not believe american righteousness should guide the Foreign Policy as cheney had that morality plank inserted into the platform of the Republican Party that could be antikissinger platform but conventional wisdom is wrong if taken as a view of the world that the truth of the facts to be arrived at kissingekissinge r it definitely is not a real test of all the policy makers who would help to shape the post world war ii ruth Security State kissinger was of most self aware of the philosophical renditions to justify his actions deeply influenced by the entire rationalist dancer breed supremely objective is back considering how often it was used to justify war was imperial existentialism. You could read his undergraduate thesis the longest ever submitted to Harvard University 400 pages it is tough. But the echo of the 50s existentialism is clearly present with intense subjectivity that there is no reality that emanates from its own individual experience. That is the odd hallmark of existence other than what be assigned as individuals and people have a responsibility and rather others develop a different kind of morality to protest or end empire purpose of so in his shadow is a manifest itself and specific policies that after he left office as a Foreign Policy intellectual but here are some of the major believes. I dont believe his undergraduate thesis is the document that proves he is the existentialist but once you get a handle on what he is arguing you can see how runs through about ethics or morality so that the past has the meaning that the future is undetermined to be aware of radical freedom error refuse to be paralyzed by the past to act on a hunch and the intuition with the perpetual creation on a costa redefinition is a responsible of true leaders not only to maintain in the perfection of order but to contemplate chaos to prime material and obviously were i am headed with good your conservative idealism that got us into the disaster but kissinger is best known is the concept balance of power but there is a fascinating passage doctoral dissertation to be highly unstable to make it almost inevitable. Is achieved by a consciousness of the awareness of balance. This isnt brought about in order to create the awareness of power the best way to produce that was too wrapped for providing what kissinger was saying over and over again is that an action has to be avoided to show it was possible. The only action could for a the systemic war in action to overcome the paralyzing fear of any drastic consequences that might result from action talking about Nuclear Escalation but the purpose of American Power was to create an awareness of american purpose a circular area of reasoning that is often how we critique the administration of the moment they do what they do well but they dont know why or have a purpose the when you dig through it isnt clear what he means that the purpose of American Power is to create the awareness we cannot defend our interests until we know what they are know what they are and tell we defend them. [laughter] kissinger thought there is no such thing as stasis great states are always evening were losing influence so the balance of power has to be constantly tested. In the book i focus our and cambodia as the good example of this perpetual motion machine. Razz perpetuated by other historians it is not contested in any form from he clearly helped nixon get elected in its 68 to buy passing information about the paris peace talks in the fall of 68 that nixon used to derail those talks to make sure that humphrey would not get a bump from any ceasefire. And apple want the vietnam war five years then with ever knew resumed set of talks they had to have resolved they could not bomb North Vietnam said they began to bomb cambodia in secret half a million tons and maybe 100,000 civilians whod died as a result of that campaign. We have to escalate to prove to send a message to saigon then the more we have to escalate to help him transform the bad man policy the idea to pretend were crazy soar the North Vietnamese would think we might do but what ever comes before this the actual act of moral insanity the ravishing and act of lerner neutral country except for that act. Nixon and kissinger is bobbing hope to decelerate the country civil war provoke a coup that provokes the invasion that provokes a civil war that there is a bomb so the circle isnt broken over and over in North Vietnam, angola, mozambique kissinger repeated the plunges into the four texts of his own circular argument the action has to be avoided to show that it is possible it gave for word a bit of a price after the fall of saigon. But when saigon fell in 35 he gave up piece of advice to ford United States will have to take some action somewhere in the world. Some action somewhere. So that continued out of office he urged the clinton to step up the bombing to demonstrate american purpose that is what he and nixon did in Southeast Asia and whether regatta writer much is secondary. We got it right or not is secondary. But kissinger would insist the effects is not on other people but to convince ourselves that we are willing to do something but those defects produce are more important than the consequences of that act of foreign victims. We can go through where that played out but this may sound familiar and it should his philosophy is the dance card of the neocons who believe america creates its own reality crystal constantly complains americans have grown too soft Paul Wolfowitz complained there were not enough casualties too hard in america to the fight three 9 11. Dick cheney held there is the slightest chance a prep will be realized in the u. S. Would act as if it were a foregone conclusion also the direct lineage from a 82 passenger he did not invent this he pulls upon the old german a rationalism Continental Air rationalism. After 9 11 kissinger was an early supporter to attack also somalia and yemen as well to contour to bush of revolution jews sweep away the notions of sovereignty and on august 22nd 2002 with laying out the case it was the only option he directly quoted kissinger there was a preemptive action and once it turned disastrous the metric of a with staffers citing his experience in vietnam for why the u. S. Should not withdraw troops. I was spending time on your conservative is of but it is thought highly selfconscious senses that reaches well beyond republicans to capture the pragmatist and Hillary Clinton protested the invasion of cambodia recently praised kissinger calling him a friend that she relied on his counsel clinton said the famous surrealist sounds surprisingly idealistic ben said his vision is her vision as a liberal. Defense intellectuals penn essays prescribing a tonic for the troubles that they have difficulty to define what that looks like off than he is defying did negative terms not the recklessness of the neocons i tried to show that it is but it isnt the barack obama and purpose without knowing what it is but he is so hard to pin down it is the rehabilitation of the National Security state their relentless and of the tourism that goes with it. Constant on ending war has done more than cause some thought for morality. But according to ruth clinton everybody is though liberal and kissinger is the avatar. Last year while promoting his most recent book responding to a question about his past controversial policies pointing to barack obama there is no difference what he did of cambodia or what the president is doing with pakistan and yemen and somalia. When asked about his role in chile in 73 he said his actions were justified by what barack obama did namibia and what he wanted to do in syria. His defense with his absurd assertion that you were civilians died from the half a million tons of bombs in cambodia but he is right that the political arguments that he made at the time justify his illegal war in cambodia and laos was far out of the mainstream but now is under question part of International Law with the right the u. S. To violate a neutral country to destroy enemy sanctuaries. [inaudible conversations] questions over is there. First let me congratulate you on being able to open a dialogue that is long overdue and not just gone k